Geek Girl Review: Star Trek, Into Darkness

This Capital Geek Girl movie review is by Geek Girl MJ, my best friend and easily the biggest girl geek I've ever met. She got to see the new Star Trek movie before me and had a lot to say, so I asked her to share her thoughts in a review; here it is. 

MJ REVIEWS STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS 

MJ

I need to say first off that I absolutely acknowledge that my Star Trek knowledge is not as vast as so many others out there.  I’ve always been a Star Wars kid; that being said, I do love my Trek.  

When I went to the screening of Iron Man 3 last month, I thought to myself, ‘Man, that is setting the bar pretty high for the other summer movie competition!’. Well, J.J. Abrams took that bar, set fire to it, used it to draw a line in the sand and then dropped it like a mic. Abrams out.

I want to avoid any spoilers because no one likes those. If they did they’d be called “Information Gifts” instead of spoilers.  I purposely avoided trailers so I could go in with a totally open mind and let the movie unfold and try to take me along with it.  Into Darkness had me completely immersed within the first 5 minutes and I stayed there, right on board the Enterprise for the whole 127 minutes.  The movie moved at a good pace and didn’t feel like it was dragging me anywhere.  There were solid performances given by all of the main crew, with fairly good performances by Peter Weller and Alice Eve.  Benedict Cumberbatch created a stellar character as a top-notch  villain and disappoints no one.  Indeed all of the awesome you love about him as Sherlock Holmes [from the BBC series, Sherlock] is here with so much more awesome added on top of that.

Surprising to no one is that it was visually stunning, lens flare and all!  I made the choice to not see it in 3D or IMAX (my preference, nothing against) but I do fully intend to go again and see it in all the glory that these formats offer moviegoers.   I feel like it could only add to the experience.

The reason I mentioned my lack of Star Trek knowledge is this: Many fans may indeed take issue with jumps in story arcs or a re-writing of some of the history.  A couple of times I raised my eyebrow (only one because that’s what Spock would do...WWSD), and then realized that the first film plot was what made that a possibility and think that the Star Trek universe is only richer for it.  I also mentioned my deep love for Star Wars and can tell you this: after watching Into Darkness I would like to write George Lucas a thank you letter for releasing his iron grip on the Wars franchise and giving the opportunity to have J.J. Abrams be in charge.  The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

-MJ